WeWantto HearfromYou! PUBLIC MEETING

Share your ideas for the design of Dallas’ proposed regional, community, & neighborhood family aquatic centers & associated public art projects

Meeting Locations & Times

Proposed Site: Kidd Spring Park

Feb. 4, 2016 · 6:30 p.m.

Kidd Spring Rec Center

711 W. Canty

Proposed Site: Tietze Park

Feb. 9, 2016 · 6:30 p.m.

Ridgewood-Belcher Rec Center

6818 Fisher Rd.

Proposed Site: Fretz Park

Feb. 11, 2016 · 6:30 p.m.

Fretz Rec Center

6950 Belt Line Rd.

Proposed Site: Samuell-Grand Park

Feb. 18, 2016 · 6:30 p.m.

Samuell-Grand Rec Center

6200 E. Grand Ave.

Night Shift

City of Dallas Aquatics Master Plan information available at www.dallasparks.org

AM1:38

Red Bulls are purchased at QT on Skillman at Northwest Highway. “I’ll only use the bathrooms at QT or Race Track,” Darnell confides. Her other public bathroom options are gross.

AM1:44

En route to the site of a reported theft at an apartment on Whitehurst, Darnell, who weighs maybe 115 pounds and looks like she could be a high school student, coolly recounts her recent encounter at a neighborhood apartment complex with a man’s mutilated body. “They cut his throat and pulled his tongue through the wound. He was so bloody, I didn’t know that was what it was until later,” she says. “It is a thing the drug cartels will do.”

AM1:46

A tenant of the Las Brisas apartments says a man she hired on Craigslist to help her move stole some of her clothing, including a dress. Her one-bedroom apartment is stuffed floor-toceiling with boxes. The hired man helped her pack and wound up staying for a month, she says. She let him borrow her car yesterday, she says, which is when he removed the shopping bags containing a $200 dress. Darnell listens to the whole story, nods and asks questions. She explains that the theft is a civil case now, because the man was living with her. “He did not live with me,” the woman barks. “I barely knew him.” Darnell asks, “You say he slept on your couch since Thanksgiving, right?” That’s right, the woman admits. Darnell explains that this constitutes cohabitation in the eyes of the law. The woman rants that Texas is the worst place she has ever lived. Her laundry has been stolen three times from the apartment’s laundry room. The officers listen and nod and tell her to call them if the man comes back. “Do not let him back in,” they say. Before leaving, Darnell asks the woman about the other man, the one who was here last time she came. The woman says she doesn’t know what Darnell is talking about.

AM2:21

Back in the squad car Darnell says she is positive she was there recently and that the caller had a similar story the last time. “We see a lot of repeat customers on nights,” Ansley adds. Sometimes her job is simply to lend an ear or to comfort someone who is anxious, Darnell says. Sometimes, if the caller seems especially troubled, these types of visits lead to contacting Adult Protective Services.

AM2:25

As we pass The Haven apartments at Lake Highlands Town Center, Ansley says he found a naked guy sitting in his car there the other night.

AM2:34

The security guards at Valencio apartments in Vickery Meadow need assistance — trouble with a belligerent drunk. The complex is silent and dark, aside from impressive holiday light displays on several porches. The guards explain that they found a man sleeping in the passenger side of a car. When they attempted to wake him, they say, he began swinging. “When you startle a drunk person, that tends to happen,” Darnell says. Ansley approaches the vehicle containing the unconscious man and attempts to stir him. The man is disoriented but calm, at first — but a language barrier breeds confusion and soon he is yelling things in Burmese, and people emerge from nearby apartments. When the man begins howling and hitting, Ansley cuffs him and escorts him to the backseat of the police car. That’s when his bawling wife comes running from a downstairs apartment. A youngster from upstairs translates. The couple fought earlier, we learn, which is why the husband was sleeping in the car. Through the teenaged interpreter, Darnell explains to the woman that her husband will not be locked up for long. She hands her a piece of paper with the number and address to the Dallas Marshall’s office, where he will spend the night in the drunk tank. A back-up cruiser drives away with him.

AM3:13

Idling at Vickery Meadow park, Darnell types the report. She can’t do it while the car is moving — she gets carsick. If needed somewhere, they would switch places so she could drive and he could type, but things are quiet now.

AM3:45

The young officers agree that the worst parts of the job include any crime involving children. Just last week they discovered a deceased infant. The caregiver reportedly had rolled on top of the baby, who suffocated. Ansley recalls the recent case of a 13-year-old impregnated by her own father. Darnell lies awake some nights thinking of a kid she picked up walking down a residential street in his pajamas. It was a nice neighborhood and he was just wandering alone. No one knew who he was. Finally they found his house through the homeowners association. Inside they discovered a filthy, chaotic mess of a living situation and the boy’s father naked and inebriated inside a closet. “He was the sweetest kid,” Darnell recalls. “He drew me a picture that I still have. Thing was, inside that house, there were photos that had been taken maybe a year earlier, and the dad looked OK. They looked happy and OK. What had gone so wrong?” It all brought her own dysfunctional childhood to mind, Darnell concedes. It’s also hard because, once her part is done, she leaves the case behind. She doesn’t know what happened to that little boy after leaving him with Child Protective Services. “We don’t get closure,” she says.

—Christina Hughes Babb